Annette turned from the questioner and found herself gazing into the Wolf’s now troubled eyes. Croisette saw a sudden lifting of her swelling bosom as she breathed deeply. And in that moment he felt that John Danson’s reputation had been well earned.
“Ye-es.”
It was Annette’s first falter.
But John Danson appeared not to notice. Certainly he displayed no interest in it. He pursued his questioning with unruffled composure, and, to the uninitiated, in a direction that looked to be leading him no whither.
In reality, however, he was delving. He was delving deep into the soul of the girl while he held her under the anæsthetic of illusion. He was shrewdly recalling to her the almost forgotten past. He was returning the playmate of her youth to her; that lank fearless youth who had always been her willing slave.
Croisette understood.
For awhile Annette was clay in the man’s hands. At first she displayed no anxiety. His questions seemed to have so little to do with the case. She answered readily. It was almost as if she welcomed them.
But in a while the lawyer became more pressing. In a while his tone sharpened. And his jaws closed, snapping over his words. And very quickly reaction set in. First came the girl’s return of restlessness. She found it difficult to respond to the keen inquiry of his eyes. Then fear became apparent in a gaze that looked everywhere but at the questioner. Her replies came in a voice that had grown strident. Then, as the hunted look in her eyes grew, the half-breed in her became uppermost and she sought evasion and subterfuge.
The whole process was something that Croisette had witnessed often enough before. A witness in John Danson’s hands was rather like a snared rabbit. He would wring any secret this girl was striving to keep from him out of her, as surely as someone had shot Sinclair. He turned to the prisoner.
There had come a significant change in the Wolf. He was no longer lounging. There was none of his earlier indifference. But much more of the anxious searching in his eyes. He was leaning over the rail of the dock, and the smile of his queer eyes was a tiger-smile.